MOSCOW, January 24, /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow’s CCTV surveillance system helped solve at least 2,000 crimes in 2013, the city’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at an enlarged meeting of the board of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Department for the city of Moscow.

Sobyanin said that last year the video monitoring raised the solution of offences by 50 percent.

“Although if we take absolute figures, they are very low,” the mayor said. “If about 170,000 offences were registered last year, only 2,000 of them were solved with the help of the CCTV system. But the potential is rather vast.”

Sobyanin also said it became safer to stay in public places due to the video monitoring. The squares at the railway stations and the railway terminals were put into order as “we have cleared away illegal trade, brought in elementary orderliness, redeveloped these areas and equipped yards of and entrances to apartment houses with CCTV cameras and also put them on big squares .”

Along with it, the state-of-the-art information technology, in particular smart video surveillance system, helps to reduce the number of road accidents and the numbers of resultant deaths or injuries.

“For the first time over the recent years, Moscow road accidents have been seven percent down and this is positive dynamics,” the Moscow mayor said.

Joint efforts by traffic police and the smart surveillance system have brought up these encouraging results, he said. “We can clearly see that a sharp decline in road accidents is registered on the roads where the smart transport surveillance system has been installed.”

In just a couple of weeks the law enforcement agencies will be expected to ensure security at the Olympic Games, Sobyanin said adding that though “they /the Games/ aren’t held in Moscow it is necessary for us to concentrate on preventing any possible provocations, any attempts of terrorist attacks. We must concentrate here the city’s police forces to ensure people’s security.”

Meanwhile, the city government would provide further assistance in equipping the Moscow police with everything necessary. “We’ll refurbish and build compounds for district police stations, for canine units as well as provide police officers with social security and housing,” the Moscow mayor said.